Rival To Union Head Seeks Source Of Ad Money

April 01, 2006|By PETER DUJARDIN, pdujardin@dailypress.com | 247-4749

NEWPORT NEWS — A candidate for president of the shipyard's main union wants answers as the election approaches.

The man hoping to unseat incumbent union president Alton Glass Sr. as the leader of the shipyard's main labor union is calling on Glass to reveal how he is paying for the glossy advertising pieces and radio spots issued by his campaign.

Arnold Outlaw, a former two-term president of Local 8888 of the United Steelworkers union, contends that Glass' ticket is getting financial assistance from others -- and Outlaw wants to know who.

"I want him to tell us where he got his stuff printed, what it cost and where the money came from," Outlaw said. "Just looking at it, the ads and the papers themselves -- you don't go down to your local Office Depot and OfficeMax and have something like that done."

The three-page campaign fold-outs that Glass' camp is putting out, Outlaw said, look remarkably similar -- in the coloring, the printing style and the glossy paper used -- to fliers put out by the United Steelworkers Union during the last round of contract negotiations.

"It looks very similar to materials I've seen the Steelworkers put out in the past," Outlaw said.

When reached by phone Friday, Glass said he would not talk to the press until after the election.

He refused to allow a reporter to even begin to tell him about Outlaw's demand that Glass reveal the source of his campaign funds or who paid for the printing.

It would be a violation of union procedures, Outlaw said, for Steelworkers headquarters or other Steelworkers entities -- such as the district office in Kentucky or the staff office in Hampton -- to use union money to support one local union candidate over another.

Glass, Outlaw and two other shipyard workers, Jerry Goode and Walter Haynesworth, are vying for the union presidency in an election to be held Wednesday.

John Duray, a Steelworkers spokesman at the union's Pittsburgh headquarters, denied that headquarters, the district office or the Hampton staff office is using union money to help Glass. Federal law, he said, bans that practice.

"We don't use union funds for union politics, period," Duray said.

"I can categorically guarantee that," he said. "Now, if a friend of mine is running and I want to contribute to his campaign, there is absolutely no prohibition against that."

Just because a piece of campaign literature looks somewhat like fliers used during negotiations doesn't mean the union paid for the campaign piece, Duray said.

Neither Billy Thompson, the Steelworkers' district director in Kentucky, nor Bill Harriday, the union's staff representative in Hampton, could be reached for comment late Friday.

Outlaw said he has no idea how Glass' team paid for its advertisements or radio spots. But, he said, local union members at the shipyard deserve a full accounting.

"Let's put it on the table," Outlaw said. "I've got an open book, and I think he should be up front about it, too. We don't have a lot of money. We just have ideas." *